The Rape of Venice

by Dennis Wheatley

  Bernadotte had won his fame with the army of the Sambreet-Meuse and had expected to succeed Jourdan on his retirement. Instead, the Directory, at last acceding to Boneparte’s plea for reinforcements for his final drive into Austria, had ordered Bernadotte to march his division down to Milan. The result had not been a happy one.

  The French armies of the North were still practising the old war technique of ponderous march and counter march, with plenty of prolonged periods in between for drill and sprucing themselves up. Bernadotte’s division were good fighters when they actually got into a battle, but when they joined the Army of Italy neither they nor their General sought to hide their contempt for the slovenly mobs which had performed such prodigies of valour under Augereau and Masséna. The latter were largely ex sans-culottes, the former moderates, and as soon as the campaign was over open strife broke out between them. Brune, who was temporarily commanding Masséna’s division, had called on Bernadotte’s Chief-of-Staff and asked him to forbid the use of the word ‘Monsieur’ among his officers. The Chief-of-Staff had refused and challenged Brune to a duel. Officers and men had taken up their leaders’ quarrel with the result that, within twenty-four hours, fifty men had been killed and three hundred wounded.

  Boneparte and Bernadotte had disliked one another on sight, and the former’s Chief-of-Staff, Berthier, had developed a positive hatred for the handsome, long-nosed supercilious Gascon. But at least they had good reason to believe him loyal to the Directory; so they had got rid of him by pushing him off to Paris after Augereau.

  Couriers came galloping in from Paris night and day, but even with the best speed they could make, their news was over a week old before it got to Montebello. It was therefore not until September 13th that Boneparte and his staff had first particulars of events on 18th of the month in the revolutionary calendar named Fructidor.

  This date, by the old reckoning September 4th, 1797, was to rank with 13th Vendémiaire, and later 18th Brumaire, as key dates in the short life of the Directory. The corrupt but courageous Barras, and the brutal but bold Augereau, managed everything between them. The former did not even tell his colleagues Rewbell and Larevelliére what was planned until a few hours before the blow was struck.

  Augereau’s troops surrounded the two Chambers and demanded the surrender of the Constitutional Guard, a large part of which had been suborned beforehand. When asked by what right he did so, he had grinned, drawn his huge sabre, and declared: ‘By that of the sword.’

  Next day the Five Hundred and the Ancients were summoned to meet in the Odeon Theatre and the School of Medicine, respectively. Few who were not partisans of the Left dared to do so. To these were put resolutions that Barras and his friends had drafted overnight. The principle of these was the completely arbitrary cancellation of the recent elections in forty-eight Departments, thus throwing out at one stroke the greater part of the Deputies who represented the moderate views now held by a majority of the people of France.

  After this first news of the coup d’état couriers arrived almost every hour at Montebello bringing further details. Some fifty members of the two Chambers, among them Generals Pichegru and Willot and such famous anti-Terrorists as Boissy d’Anglas, Bourdon of the Oise and Barbé-Marbois, had been placed under arrest and condemned to transportation; so, too, had the able and honest Director, Barthélemy, to whom, as a diplomat, France owed the withdrawal of Prussia from among her active enemies. Carnot’s arrest had also been ordered, but he had taken the precaution of hiding in his bedroom at the Luxembourg a spare key to a small gate in the garden and, warned only just in time by his brother, he had escaped through it.

  No one could have been more pleased at this last piece of news that Roger. Although Carnot had been one of Robespierre’s colleagues, he had taken no part in the Terror and, as a professional soldier, concerned himself only with the defence of France. He had not only raised, armed and trained her great new armies, but for five years been solely responsible for the strategy by which she had kept her many enemies at bay. He had, too, been in a large part personally responsible for the great republican victory at Wattignies; for, having planned the battle with Jourdan at his field-headquarters, he had later, on seeing a wing of the French front break, leapt into the fray, rallied the retreating sans-culottes and, waving his hat on the end of his cane, himself led them back in a victorious charge. He was a great man in every sense, honourable, generous, courageous, compassionate, and with high ideals for the real betterment of the masses; and Roger regarded him with more respect than he had for any other revolutionary leader.

  After a further week or so, to the relief of most people, it became apparent that the Left did not intend to use its triumph to launch a renewal of the Terror. With shocking barbarity the shilly-shallying Pichegru, the unfortunate Barthélemy, and a number of others were transported in iron cages through France to La Rochelle, before being shipped off to ‘la guillotine sec’, as exiles in the fever-ridden swamps of Cayenne. Apart from this, no acts of tyranny were indulged in and Paris, although trembling, remained quiet. But the laws against emigrés and priests were once more rigidly enforced, the Royalist Clubs were closed, and a heavy censorship was placed upon the press. Merlin of Douai and Françoise de Neuf-château were elected as Directors to replace Carnot and Barthélemy, much to Augereau’s annoyance, as he had hoped to become a Director himself; but to console him he was made General-in-Chief of the Armies of the Rhine.

  News of a further result of the coup d’état reached Peschiera, on Lake Garda, to which Boneparte had moved at the end of September. The peace negotiations at Lille had dragged on since July, because Mr. Pitt, although willing to buy peace by giving the French practically everything for which they asked, still refused to give up the Cape of Good Hope. The French were, it is true, demanding its return to the Dutch, but everyone knew that now they dominated Holland so completely it would be turned into a French naval base, and with the French at the Cape it would not be long before they cut Britain’s invaluable shipping route to India.

  The French Republicans had always regarded Britain as their most deadly enemy and had no desire for peace with her. Now that they had succeeded in crushing the Moderates, who favoured peace, they broke off the negotiations and, on September 17th, Lord Malmesbury had been told in the most cavalier fashion to leave France within twenty-four hours.

  Roger had hated the thought of Britain making such a humiliating peace after all the years of effort, thousands of lives and millions in treasure that she had poured into the war; yet he needed no telling how black her future looked now that, once the Austrian business was settled, she must fight on alone. The only escape from invasion and the annihilation he could see for his country was that, by hook or by crook, she must once more arouse Europe against France and provide her again with enemies on the Continent.

  The greatest hope for that lay in the fact that France was still bankrupt. Only the huge indemnities that Boneparte had been extracting from the Italian States had kept her going during the past eighteen months. And Boneparte had altered the whole aspect of the war to one of open aggression and plunder. If that policy was continued, and it must be unless France was to collapse, the next victims would be the small German states on the far side of the Rhine. At that Prussia and Russia would become alarmed and might be drawn in to Britain’s assistance. Austria too was very far from being down and out. She now had Dalmatia, with its hardy population of Croat and Slovene fighting men to draw upon, as well as Hungary and her other vast dominions. With such a huge reservoir of manpower, given a few months to recover from the blow Boneparte had dealt her, she could again put great armies in the field. That, Roger felt, made it all the more imperative that nothing possible should be left undone which would strengthen Austria’s hand in launching a new campaign, and his mind turned once more to Venice.

  From Bourrienne he had learned the inner history of Boneparte’s rape of the Serene Republic. The Austrians had long had trouble in ruling their Flemish subj
ects so that, now France had a secure hold on Belgium, they were prepared to give up their claim to it, but only provided that they were compensated with equally valuable territory nearer home. Boneparte had already made his plans for forming the Italian Duchies into one or more Republics under French influence so that, as he had written to the Directory, in any future war France would be able to menace the rest of Italy through them; therefore, they could not be given up. But what about the broad fertile lands ruled by the Serenissima?

  There lay Venice: a great fat, golden calf, that had only to be killed and cut up. But Venice had declared her neutrality. She would not even act like a very small bull and put up the sort of token resistance that had served to justify Boneparte’s deposing the rulers of the Duchies, and even he could not bring himself to face the opprobrium with which all Europe would have regarded him had he cut the calf’s throat while it licked his hand. It had to be made to bite.

  On his instructions, his agents had stopped at nothing that might goad the mild beast into a protesting bleat. They had set the nobles of the mainland against those of the city, used the separatist ambitions of minorities and fostered a revolutionary spirit in the mobs of the towns. He had given his brutal soldiery carte blanche to do as they liked while quartered in Venetian territory, and been far more harsh in his exactions and requisitions from this neutral state than in any of the lands he had conquered.

  In spite of all this the Serenissima had remained with bended knee; but, outside its control, unceasing deliberate torment had at last aroused sporadic resistance. That had been enough. With sickening hypocrisy the little Corsican had told the Serenissima’s envoys, sent to express regret and offer handsome compensation, that he ‘could not discuss matters with men whose hands were dripping with blood’.

  Even before that the fate of the Serene Republic as a nation had been sealed and, when rumours of his intention had got about, he had temporarily masked his true character as a brigand by throwing out the suggestion that, if Venice would give up her northern provinces to Austria, she should receive as compensation Bologna, Ferrara and the Romagna. But he had not meant one word of it; these ex-Papal States had already been earmarked by him as part of his new Cispadine Republic.

  The ‘Easter Vespers’, as the massacre of the French in Verona had come to be called, was the fruit of all his efforts. After it he no longer needed to talk of compensation. He had his long desired pretext for declaring war on Venice. The spineless Serenissima collapsed, enabling him to cut chunks of meat from the living body of the calf and chuck them at will to the Austrians.

  But the Austrians were greedy, and clever enough to know that France needed peace as badly as they did. Their envoys, M. de Merveldt and the Marquis di Gallo, had shilly-shallied for months at Montebello putting off the agreement of definite terms while watching events in Paris and hoping for a change of Government that would be to their advantage.

  It had not matured. On the contrary, the coup d’état of 18th Fructidor had settled the Directory in the saddle more firmly than ever. Boneparte’s hand was strengthened. He was able to threaten now if matters were not concluded soon he would resume the offensive and, after all, conclude them in Vienna.

  The Emperor felt disinclined to call his bluff and Thugut, the Austrian Chancellor, sent his most able diplomat, Count Cobenzl, to enter on really serious negotiations. Early in October, Boneparte, accompanied by his personal staff, moved up to Passeriano, south of Udine, to meet the new Austrian Plenipotentiary. In addition to Venice’s territories on the east of the Adriatic, which Austria had already grabbed, he wanted her mainland territories as far west as the river Adige and the city itself. In return Austria was prepared to give up all claim to Belgium, to exchange the city of Mayence for that of Venice and to accept France’s boundary as the Rhine. The Directory wanted the boundary but was so strongly averse to giving the Austrians all they wanted that it threatened to order the armies of the Rhine to take the field again.

  This possibility of a resumption of hostilities caught Boneparte at an awkward time. The Austrians had cleverly talked away the summer and the idea of waging another winter campaign through the Alps did not appeal to him at all. Moreover, he wanted the Austrians out of the war so that he could develop new schemes he had in mind. He therefore decided to ignore the Directory’s orders and make the best peace he could get behind their backs.

  Venice was clearly the main bone of contention. The Emperor was set on having it, and the Directory were set on incorporating it in the new French controlled Cisalpine Republic. Boneparte, on the contrary, while stripping it to its shirt had all along posed as its protector. He liked the rôle and, from mixed motives, wished to continue playing it. At times he enjoyed making generous gestures and this was a chance to make one. If, too, he allowed the city to retain its independence, that meant that the thousand-year-old Republic would survive; so, although he had reduced it to a puppet state he would, instead of being regarded as her assassin, be hailed as her champion. He had raped Venice, but would save her from murder.

  Having got rid of General Clarke, Boneparte ignored the Directory’s orders and put his own terms to Count Cobenzl. Berthier, meanwhile, was told to get out the maps and, as a precaution, start planning a new campaign, and was given several officers, Roger among them, to assist him.

  The Chief-of-Staff was an ugly little man with a head far too big for his body. The splendour of the uniforms he designed for himself could not disguise the ungainliness of his movements, or his enormous red hands with their finger-nails bitten to the quick. His speech was as awkward as his body and he was incapable of showing natural affability. But, under his frizzy hair, he had a quite exceptional brain.

  Not that he was an original thinker and, although he did not lack for courage, on his own he would not have made even a passable General. His forte was his extraordinary capacity for memorising detail. He could at any time give the approximate strength, the position, and the name of the commander, of every unit in the Army of Italy. He was a living card-index, carrying every sort of information about fortresses, topography, munitions, supplies, hospitals, transport and the enemy. His value to Boneparte was trebled by two other factors: he positively worshipped the General-in-Chief and was capable of working swiftly, yet carefully, for far longer hours than any other man could possibly have sustained. At critical times in the campaign he had often gone for several days without sleep and appeared no wit the worse for it.

  For some days Roger devilled for him, while he worked out with meticulous care the routes which should be taken by infantry, cavalry, artillery and transport of each division, should it become necessary to resume the war. It was on October 11th that, after a morning session with Berthier, Roger met Boneparte in a corridor, and the little Corsican said to him abruptly: ‘You seem to have forgotten your suggestion about my spending a night in Venice, to meet an Indian Princess.’

  Roger was very far from having forgotten, but he had felt that, although they were now within a day’s ride of Venice, it would be tactless to reopen the matter while this new period of intense activity continued, and he said so.

  Boneparte grunted. ‘I told you to remind me, so you should have. But I’ve thought of it more than once. It promises to be an interesting experience. Cobenzl will not receive from the Emperor any reply to my latest proposals for some days; so now is the time. How soon can you arrange it?’

  ‘To manage the matter with discretion I’ll need two clear days in Venice,’ Roger replied. ‘If all is going well, I could get a courier back to you here the day after tomorrow; then, if you go down to Mestre on the fourteenth, I’ll report to you there that evening with everything in readiness for you to dine with the lady that night.’

  ‘Good; see to it, then.’

  ‘Mon Général, I will leave at once; but there is one thing I must take with me. I need a line of authority from you to Villetard, instructing him to give me any assistance I may require.’

  ‘Why should you nee
d that?’

  ‘There are such matters as suitable accommodation to arrange. Far too many tongues would wag if I brought the Princess to the French Embassy and you dined with her there. At such short notice …’

  ‘You are right. Come with me.’ Boneparte took Roger into his cabinet, scribbled the line of authority and, as he handed it over, said: ‘No scandal, mind. There is no reason why Madame, my wife, should ever know that I have left here except on a short journey to inspect troops, but I am bound to be recognised at Mestre, and I want no rumours running round among the Venetians that I slipped into the city by night in order to seduce an ex-Senator’s wife.’

  ‘You may rely on me,’ Roger declared firmly, and half an hour later he set off with high hopes that, at long last, his chance had come to be revenged on the villainous Malderini.

  27

  The Trap is Set

  In the early hours of the morning Roger reached Mestre. It had been a long and tiring ride, but during it he had matured his plans and, although they entailed great risk to himself, he was now more than ever determined to go through with them.

  The French Headquarters at Mestre was in a large villa on the outskirts of the town and, as one of the General-in-Chief’s A.D.C.s, he had no difficulty in getting a shake-down there for what remained of the night. Next morning he had himself ferried across the three-mile-wide stretch of shallow water to Venice and by half-past nine was closeted with Villetard at the French Embassy.

  When he had confirmed that Malderini was still in Venice and keeping the Embassy secretly informed about the anti-French conspiracy, he asked, ‘Is there any prospect of a rising taking place in the near future?’